welcome and enjoy!

Hi and welcome to my blog about comics from other people’s childhood! It is dedicated primarily to British humour comics of the 60s and 70s. The reason they are not from my childhood is simply because I didn’t live in the UK back then (nor do I live there now). I knew next to nothing about them until fairly recently but since then I’ve developed a strong liking for the medium and amassed a large collection, including a number of complete or near complete sets. My intention is to use this blog as a channel for sharing my humble knowledge about different titles, favourite characters and creators as I slowly research my collection.

QUICK TIP: this blog is a sequence of posts covering one particular comic at a time. The sequence follows a certain logic, so for maximum results it is recommended that the blog is read from the oldest post up.

Copyright of all images and quotations used here is with their respective owners. Any such copyrighted material is used exclusively for educational purposes and will be removed at first notice. All other text copyright Irmantas P.

Friday, September 9, 2016

The next WHOOPEE!
fellow-character to turn up at Scream Inn was the wicked Evil
Eye. Illustrated by Reg Parlett, the character was part of the original
WHOOPEE! lineup since the very first issue of the comic. The Scream
Inn and the Evil Eye episodes shown below are from WHOOPEE! & SVIVER ND
SHAKE No. 75 with the cover date of 30th August, 1975.

I hope you are enjoying this
series of guest appearances, and there are a few more left, including Sweeny
Toddler, the Bumpkin Billionaires (this bunch actually hoped to get rid
of some of their wealth rather that win the measly million offered by Innkeeper
& Co), Toy Boy, and Smiler, so be sure to come back soon
to see them!

Friday, August 5, 2016

‘Orrible Hole, illustrated by Reg Parlett,
started in WHOOPEE! (or rather WHOOPEE! & SHIVER AND SHAKE) No. 43 (January
18, 1975), appeared regularly throughout 1975 and 1976
and the first half of 1977, then became less frequent. It continued to pop up
during 1978 and 1979 as part of the Ghostly Go Round Feature, and ended
in WHOOPEE! No. 300, cover-dated January 12, 1980.

This little weird character knocked on the door
of Scream
Inn in Whoopee! & SHIVER
AND SHAKE No. 58 (May 3, 1975). Check out the two-pager,
followed by the ‘Orrible Hole strip proper from the same issue of the excellent
and hilarious WHOOPEE! comic. Aren't they marvelous?!! I really must get round to doing a detailed
overview of WHOOPEE! when I have more free time on my hands…

Monday, November 2, 2015

Ghostly
Go Round was an interesting feature in WHOOPEE!
comic. As young readers gradually lost interest in the once-popular horror
comedy genre (as confirmed by cancellation of such brilliant WHOOPEE! features
as World-Wide
Weirdies and Scream Inn/Spooktacular 7) and the
Editor needed to clear space for new material, he came up with an idea of bringing
four strips under one umbrella and rotating them in sequence. The strips that
formed Ghostly Go Round were Evil Eye, Fun-Fear, Creepy
Car and ‘Orrible Hole. The feature was launched in the first issue of
1979 and continued for slightly more than a year before all the four strips
were put to rest one by one.

Ghostly
Go Round required a new logo that could be used
with all the 4 strips and the job was given to Ken Reid. He used the idea of Bob
Nixon’s original Fun-Fear logo, made it spookier and squeezed the four main characters
into the bottom left corner. The result wasn’t so great, IMHO. I think Bob
Nixon’s old version was much better. Below are both logos side-by-side.

Here are the first appearances of the 4 strips in the heyday of WHOOPEE! comic. Evil
Eye started in the very first issue of the paper:

…
followed by Fun-Fear in the issue cover-dated 17 August, 1974:

…
then Creepy
Car on 12th October later that year (UPDATE: the strip was in fact an immigrant from SHIVER AND SHAKE where it had started nine weeks before the paper folded. The episode shown below is the first one in the combined Whoopee! and Shiver & Shake, hence the recap of the origins):

…
and finally ‘Orrible Hole in the first issue of 1975 (cover-dated Jan 18
because the comic missed a few weeks due to industrial action at the junction
of 1974/75):

Terry Bave
was the biggest contributor with 9 pages of Shake, Shiver,
The
Desert Fox and Webster artwork. Here is a large colour
panel from one of his Shake sets:

The second largest
input was by Mike Lacey who drew the cover and 5 pages of
Mirth
Shakers gags.

A number of
sets were drawn by substitute artists, such as Frank McDiarmid on Frankie
Stein:

… Alf
Saporito on Moana Lisa:

… and Les
Barton on Fixer and Ghoul Getters Ltd.

By this
time regular readers of Shiver and Shake
annuals and holiday specials were well familiar with Scatty Bat and Wizard
Prang and Demon Druid that were in fact reprints from older comics. In
this edition the roster of reprints was supplemented with another feature - Freddie
Fang the Werewolf Cub, originally from COR!! I covered the strip last
year in my COR!! series, you can read the review HERE. The 5 episodes included
in the 1976 Shiver and Shake holiday
special were by the brilliant Reg Parlett. The original sets were in black and
white but two of the reprints were coloured in. Check out an original and its
coloured version side by side. This happens to be the first episode of Freddie Fang from the first issue of COR!!

As can be seen
from the list of the strips above, the special had no Scream Inn that was
always the feature to look for in Shiver
& Shake publications but the two surprise one-offs included in the
edition are more than enough to make up for the omission.

The first
one is International Street from the hand of Joe Colquhoun. It may
very well be a reprint but if it is, I don’t know where from and would be
delighted if someone told me the source and whether it was part of a series:

And if you
thought International Street was the highlight of the 1976 SHIVER AND
SHAKE holiday special, think again because the magazine also included Which
Witch is Which? – a two-pager by no less than Mr. Ken Reid. We’ll
probably never know if this was a test episode for a series that was never
followed up, or perhaps something that Mr. Reid drew for his own enjoyment and
the editor though it was too good not to be printed. Either way, it is an
excellent set showing the master at his very best…